Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
God has a sense of humor though and he must see funny things in us. He must also have some love. We're still here and there are still great things that go on. There are great doctors who discover how to separate twins and how to put together a human being to walk again after it's said he won't. Those are all there as signs.
I'm not going out and hitting a 95-mph fastball where I can't see the stitches. I'm not on a professional football team looking to tackle a fullback who is built like solid wood. I'm a thinking person, and I've been blessed with the ability to see some things and talk about them in a way that registers in a humorous and funny way.
I want to get violence - I want schools to start from K through 12 to just every day have teachers understand that they don't want to talk about anything that is violent, and they want to explain to the children how bad violence is and how behavior - violent behavior, is something that they really should not practice and think about.
I feel that in-person contact with people is the most important thing in comedy. While I'm up on stage, I can actually put myself into the audience and adjust my pace and tuning to them. I can get into their heads through their ears and through their eyes. Only through this total communication can I really achieve what I'm trying to do.
It doesn't make any difference how much money a father earns, his name is always Dad-Can-I.... Like all other children, my five have one great talent: they are gifted beggars. Not one of them ever ran into the room, looked up at me, and said, "I'm really happy that you're my father, and as a tangible token of my appreciation, here's a dollar.
We spoke to God about the children, and we were afraid to ask God for specific things. We thought that it might be too much. So we said to God 'Please give us a healthy child' and left it at that, not knowing that God is a generous God, but also has a sense of humor. And if you leave that much open for God, some wonderful jokes are going to come about.
There are stories in the Bible about people telling other people how to do things. When you hear this young man say "we don't give up," that's something human beings who win will tell you every time. Breaks will happen. When they happen, you keep the same mind about what you're doing. It's about we the people getting on with our lives and doing it that way.
A father... knows exactly what those boys at the mall have in their depraved little minds because he once owned such a depraved little mind himself. In fact, if he thinks enough about the plans that he used to have for young girls, the father not only will support his wife in keeping their daughter home but he might even run over to the mall and have a few of those boys arrested.
When you're a father you censor yourself. You get just as angry with a child but you don't want to say, "What the filth and foul and I'll filth and foul, filth and foul and, yeah, ya filth and foul face, and I'll filth and foul, foul, filth!" You don't want to say that to a child so you censor yourself and you sound like an idiot: "What the... Get your... I'll put a... Get out of my face!"
Anecdote: In a controversial way, Comedian and actor Bill Cosby sought to teach his son the pain of being lied to. Convinced his son had been dishonest regarding an issue, Cosby promised that if he told him the truth, he would not hit him. When his son did confess, Cosby did hit him. Seeing his son's shock and hurt, Cosby said he hoped this lesson had deepened his understanding of the anguish generated by a sense betrayal.
I think the part of media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent. When you look at the majority of shows on television they placate that kind of behavior. If you go through a weekly Monday through Friday, it's all there. It's in how people on the sitcoms and cop shows talk to each other.
Emotionally, a person can become so negatively driven that they don't respect the privilege of being on this Earth without their mother and their father. They may say it doesn't bother them, but there is something in us about those who are a biological part of us and don't care. People in that situation stop hearing the other voices that love them, hold them, trust them and tells them how great they are. They're focused on that one person who isn't answering them.
Guys standing around and talking about Spanish fly: 'You know anything about Spanish fly?' 'No, tell me about it.' Well there's this girl Crazy Mary, you put some in her drink man, she, 'Haaaaaaaaaaaaah.' Oh yeah, that's really groovy man, Spanish fly is groovy, yeah. From then on, any time you see a girl: 'Wish I had some Spanish fly.' Go to a party see five girls standing alone: 'Boy if I had a whole jug of Spanish fly, I'd light that corner up over there. HAAAAAAH.'
I didn't like what was on TV in terms of sitcomsit had nothing to do with the color of themI just didn't like any of them. I saw little kids, let's say 6 or 7 years old, white kids, black kids. And the way they were addressing the father or the mother, the writers had turned things around, so the little children were smarter than the parent or the caregiver. They were just not funny to me. I felt that it was manipulative and the audience was looking at something that had no responsibility to the family.
Listen to John Coltrane enough and after two bars, just two bars at any place, and you know that's him. We all have signature things that happen to be similar that you can predict and you try to stay away from that except the rhythms: those pauses, they're part of my signature, the part where I know when I say nothing, I already painted enough, led enough and I don't even have to say anything. But those pauses don't belong to me. Jack Benny was one of the first guys in comedy to make the anticipation so great that during the pause people start to laugh before the execution.